Amazon may have held the lead as smart speakers entered the marketplace, but Google is hot on its trail. According to Strategy Analytics, the Google Home Mini was the top-selling smart speaker in the world during the second quarter. Continue Reading
Google Assistant has been updated with bilingual support, a change that means the voice platform can field queries from two different languages. Prior to the update, managing more than one tongue would have required manually switching between language settings. Continue Reading
Google’s global footprint for smart speakers exceeded Amazon’s in the second quarter of 2018. According to the latest estimates from Canalys, Google’s share leapt from 16.9% in Q2 2017 to 32.3% in Q2 2018. That growth helped the tech giant surpass Amazon. Continue Reading
Google may be making a big move in its efforts to secure a bigger slice of the smart speaker pie. According to reports in the Nikkei Asian Review, Google is planning a new smart speaker that will have a video screen. If these rumors come to pass, Google could have a product in direct competition with Amazon’s Echo Show in this year’s holiday shopping season. Continue Reading
Google has released its awaited native Android podcasts app, Google Podcasts. While Google is planting its podcast discovery and distribution flag years after Apple established the category in iTunes, the release positions Google Podcasts as clear opposition to Apple’s Podcasts app. Continue Reading
Google appears to be preparing for a launch of its own internal podcast app. 9to5Google found a hint of what’s in store in the code for version 8.7 of the Google app, which includes a prompt asking users to “Get the Google Podcasts app.” Continue Reading
Google has made a move into programmatic audio advertising. The tech giant announced that audio ads are now available to all customers of its DoubleClick Bid Manager. The demand-side platform is rolling out the audio support with inventory from Google Play Music, Spotify, SoundCloud, and TuneIn. Pandora is slated to be added soon. Continue Reading
Canalys has released its latest numbers on smart speaker sales, and the research firm found that Google beat out Amazon for most units sold globally in Q1 2018. Overall, sales in this product category rose 210% to 9 million units based on Canalys’ accounting. Continue Reading
Amazon currently leads the industry for smart speakers, but more international competition has started to chip away at its dominant market share. Market research company Strategy Analytics released its first-quarter report on the product category. The analysis found that 9.2 million units were shipped globally in the period. Continue Reading
Today, several Google executives shared the latest updates for the tech company in the keynote for Google I/O. The developer-focused event shared some of the upcoming changes for the Google Assistant voice AI platform that will help the company bring the service to more countries and offer more functions. Continue Reading
The Google-YouTube family has been moving forward on a new music subscription launch, but the latest reports point to the new service being a replacement rather than an addition to the portfolio. The service, internally dubbed YouTube Remix, may be intended to replace Google Play Music when it launches. Continue Reading
Picking up from yesterday’s Part 1 of the conversation between Pacific Media’s Steve Pratt and Google’s Podcasts Product Manager Zack Reneau-Wedeen, today’s installment in the five-part series has Reneau-Wedeen evangelizing audio and planning its rise in Google information ecosystem. “There’s no good reason why audio isn’t a first-class citizen,” he said. Continue Reading